Jesse Eckerlin


Weeds
               “A weed is a plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered” —Emerson


A Weed is misplaced plant

A Weed is a veteran contender in the battle for fertility

A Weed is like political deceit: if you let it go to seed, you can be sure that more will flourish

A Weed is most definitely not the way to have a green thumb without an aching back

A Weed is an excessively decorative beard concealing a weak chin

A Weed is the pharmaceutical industry’s greatest foe

A Weed is the illegitimate child of Nature

A Weed is bedfellow of foreclosure, bankruptcy, and I’m fed up

A Weed is to the farmer what ornithology is to the birds

A Weed is a nuisance

A Weed is a pariah

A Weed is an existential crisis

A Weed is despair

A Weed is unwieldy

A Weed is a traitor to the crown with self-preservation on the mind

A Weed is unpatriotic

A Weed is up there with Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction never got found

A Weed is abstraction

A Weed is solidity in the root

A Weed is as conventional as turkey dinner with cranberry sauce on Thanksgiving

A Weed is as old as the limp cuticle on grandpa’s left index

A Weed is older than hyper a rational optimism in the face of impending disaster

A Weed is older by far than the poisons that gas it

A Weed is far more flexible than the convictions of those who condone the production and
               practice of the poisons that gas it

A Weed is adhocracy

A Weed is a guarantor of biological diversity at the expense of personal stability

A Weed is winter olympics on Stolen Native Land

A Weed is refurbishing them pesky primitives and oh yah, their untapped resources

A Weed is the whole colonialist venture

A Weed is God’s way of saying the chess board itself is debris

A Weed is absolutely necessary

A Weed is necessarily expendable

A Weed is by definition a weed by choice

A Weed is a psychological impairment in the childhood of the soil

A Weed is the elephant in the living room

A Weed is BIG NEWS

A Weed is Buster Keaton starring in The General except The General is a gardener’s frustration

A Weed is a neighbour you’ve oft ignored, whose luscious wife you’ve coveted oftener

A Weed is radical propaganda

A Weed is conservative prattle

A Weed is sometimes edible

A Weed is sometimes not

A Weed is sometimes sold in shops

A Weed is sometimes bought

A Weed is a solution for global starvation

A Weed is a catalyst for food scarcity

A Weed is a plant whose virtues have been forgotten

A Weed is a plant whose virtues have been deliberately suppressed

A Weed is a misplaced plant

A Weed is a plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered


Previously a student, cook, and book seller in Montreal, Jesse Eckerlin currently spends his time in Alcove, Quebec, remarking how certain irregular courgettes resemble hook'ed pricks or particularly ambitious flying saucers. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Willows Wept Review, Counterexample Poetics, Existere, kill author, and 8th House Publishing's Show Thieves: Contemporary Montreal Poetry anthology.
 
 
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